Talk:Ahri/@comment-6701708-20170506134123/@comment-4091261-20170522210235
You aren't wrong, though I will go as far as to say it isn't just one item. In the past and in the present, there have always been items that allowed to amplify her damage output to amazing levels. These items are what allowed to consistently be powerful throughout the seasons. In the past there was . During this time she was not really considered powerful due to champions like and scaling much better from it. However, it is still an item that boosted her power all the same. When it was replaced with , benefited more from this than as she always focused a lot on poking with rather than her combo--in fact in the same patch was removed, lost the 20% bonus damage from her . This was the breaking point for that made her top tier as all the minor changes to her managed to make her synergize even further with . People have already experimented with in the past and found success, but now with the other hextech items added, there are now more options for her to attain assassin level damage output. Perhaps the only reason people do not place it in their build normally is due to constraints which forces her to purchase a . The priority of items like , , and fills up too many slots for her to consider hextech items normally. Regardless, with the boost from alone, she manages to deal enough damage to do nuclear damage given how much the other items give. and is already. What makes her terrifying is that if she opts to replace an item like , she can increase her damage output even further. The same can be said with any other mage, but what makes stand out over the other mages is her safety. The fact she is flexible enough to easily come back after going neutral in laning phase, while simultaneously being safe enough to prevent herself from going negative in that stage, allows her to easily build these damage items and weave around, nuking everyone mid-game onwards. ---- If you want to get an idea of what makes her terrifying. Think of the off-meta crit build. Every single champion in the game can be built with extreme and . Every single champion in the game would certainly do metric tons of damage when the build is complete. However, the problem for a vast majority of these champions is that their innate kit does not flow very well into this kind of build. At least not in a way that surpasses the value of their meta build. However, there are some champions who are designed to do extremely well with this kind of build. In case, she is one of the few designed to do extremely well with the ratio boosting build. Just like and . As we know though, both of those champions are known for taking high risks while has a much safer way to poke--going as far as the fact that has ranged autoattacks to be safer when farming.